Henrik Ibsen

Always do that, wild ducks do. Go plunging right to the bottom . . . as deep as they can get . . . hold on with their beaks to the weeds and stuff—and all the other mess you find down there. Then they never come up again.

The life of a normally constituted truth is generally, say, about seventeen or eighteen years, at most twenty; rarely longer. But truths as elderly as that have always worn terribly thin. But it’s only then that the majority will have anything to do with them; then it will recommend them as wholesome food for thought. But there’s no great food-value in that sort of diet.

I love this town so much that I’d rather destroy it than see it prosper on a lie.

Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population—the intelligent ones or the fools? I think we can agree it’s the fools, no matter where you go in this world, it’s the fools that form the overwhelming majority. But I’ll be damned if that means it’s right that the fools should dominate the intelligent.

The majority is never right.

This meeting declares that it considers Dr. Thomas Stockmann, Medical Officer to the Baths, to be an enemy of the people.

I’ve only to pick up a newspaper and I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines. Over the whole country there must be ghosts, as numerous as the sands of the sea. And here we are, all of us, abysmally afraid of the light.

I have another duty equally sacred. . . . My duty to myself.

[ Helmer :] First and foremost, you are a wife and mother.

If I’m ever to reach any understanding of myself and the things around me, I must learn to stand alone. That’s why I can’t stay here with you any longer.

Our house has never been anything but a play-room. I have been your doll wife, just as at home I was Daddy’s doll child. And the children in turn have been my dolls. I thought it was fun when you came and played with me, just as they thought it was fun when I went and played with them. That’s been our marriage, Torvald.

And you call yourselves pillars of society!

Turn to the Jewish nation, the nobility of the human race. How has it preserved itself—isolated, poetical—despite all the barbarity from without? Because it had no state to burden it. Had the Jewish nation remained in Palestine, it would long since have been ruined in the process of construction, like all the other nations.

She knew well she was to give me All or Nothing!

Really to sin you have to be serious about it.

To die in agony upon a cross / Does not create a martyr; he must first / Will his own execution.

The man whom God wills to slay in the struggle of life He first individualizes.

Don’t use that foreign word “ideals.” We have that excellent native word “lies.”

Friends are to be feared, not so much for what they make us do as for what they keep us from doing.

What ought a man to be Well, my short answer is himself?

What in fact have I achieved, however much it may seem Bits and pieces trivialities.

The great secret of power is never to will to do more than you can accomplish.

Poetry is to hold judgment on your soul.

The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone.

It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.

The majority has the might—more’s the pity—but it hasn’t the right. . . . The minority is always right.

What’s a man’s first duty? The answer’s brief: to be himself.

Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke.

On the contrary.

But good God, people don’t do such things!

Castles in the air—they are so easy to take refuge in. And easy to build, too.

Mother, give me the sun.

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

The majority never has right on its side.

The worst enemy of truth and freedom in our society is the compact majority. Yes, the damned, compact, liberal majority.